I posted this originally in the thread about the release of Obama's education plan. This is my own personal opinion and as such it is impacted enormously by my problems, fears, and concerns related to issues facing new teachers today. I am not an Obama supporter and am leaning slightly to Edwards, but I have tried to be open-minded about the plan.
I have been to many different conferences and professional development activities so far this year, so coming in I don't think that there is a lack of knowledge of best practices out there. What I failed to properly communicate in my original comment but what comes through almost everywhere, is that I think the most pressing problem is a lack of consensus in the field of education. That is what I feel the government can provide through research and development done at the federal level and applied as a framework for schools everywhere. There is a strong tradition of local control of education in this country, and while I believe that is a good thing I think we need more structure and better leadership to support new teachers, administrators, and students all over the country.
Go below the fold for my original comment and analysis.
I'm going to read the plan and post about anything I find interesting or of note. Before I start I'll share some of my own views about education in this country right now.
We need to have a national dialogue about our educational priorities. We can either have high expectations for teachers and pay accordingly or we can make do with what you get when you pay $30,000 a year, which is basically what we have now; a terribly inconsistent pool of teachers ranging from the exceptional to the ineffective. What doesn't work is what we have now, which is a system chock full of different theories and ideas but with no leadership, resources, or coordination at any meaningful level. The system is horribly politicized, pulled in about a million different diretions, and criminally underfunded.
There's a reason only a small minority of teachers are still teaching after 5 years. There's zero support, there's no money, and it's downright hard. I said it. It's a tough, demanding job, and one which gets a lot of lip service paid to it but behind closed doors people don't have any respect for the profession. I came into this profession wanting to make a difference but I'm quickly realizing that it's never going to be more than a trailing spouse's profession. Even if I were the best teacher at my school, I have tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. I make $26,000 a year with little to look forward to in terms of raises. If I wanted to add my wife to my insurance I'd have to pay 1/3 of my take home pay. The bottom line is that I can't afford to work this job for very long. And this is in a rural area where the living is relatively cheap.
So for me, the #1 thing has got to be student loans and health insurance. In education, the biggest impacts can be made by improvements in other areas. Want to improve test scores among the poor? How about giving them healthcare and a place to live so they're not changing schools every 2 months? Our government does not have a goddamn clue about cooperation between departments. One of the special education teachers at my school came in after being sick the other day only because she didn't want her kids falling behind. She's ill and and on top of that and her already difficult job she's dealing with faxing the stupid Department of Education her son's military orders because they can't figure out that he can't pay his student loans while he's in Iraq. And this was something she had been dealing with for quite some time. As trivial as this sounds, it's just one example of how pathetic our government performs its duties.
Here's what I think about Obama's plan:
Improving NCLB:
His opinion of assessment is correct, but it's sort of like saying "We need to find a source of energy that is cheap, clean, and reliable." It's easy to say but pretty damn hard to do. That one is hot air to me. Taking the punitive effects out of the act is also a no-brainer. I'm not seeing a whole lot of revelation in this section.
Early Childhood:
Sounds good, and I'd love for all that to be funded. However, I wish he would have addressed the overall needs of the child more. I know he is for universal healthcare, but he had an opportunity to tie that in to ensuring academic success. I'd also be cautious about going overboard with the early childhood education thing. Let the little ones play and be around each other and all that. Save the colors and shapes for later.
Teachers:
The recruitment and preparation ideas are underwhelming so far. 40,000 competitive scholarships for $25,000 isn't going to help much. That might cover tuition. We need a lot more help than that. His preparation plan to me looks like a bunch of extra BS future teachers have to go though and something that would dissuade a prospective teacher and probably counter any draw that a $25,000 scholarship would provide. For professional development, his plan is too decentralized for it to be any better than what we currently have. Most education colleges already do what he is proposing.
As far as retention goes, mentoring is already done in most districts by now. More planning time is always good, but he doesn't really go into detail.
Now to the good stuff, the reward. He says he wants to pay teachers better, which he better because he is giving them a lot more responsibility. Once again, there isn't much detail. He says all the right things, but there really isn't anything new there that would make me think that anything substantial in terms of compensation would get passed.
Administration:
More grant programs. We have enough grant programs. As far as administration goes, there is no shortage of people trying to share their special "knowledge" about running a school. My principal has been to quite a few of these conferences so far this year.
I'm starting to see a trend here, and it involves competive grants. This isn't really anything new, and from my perspective it only adds to the confusion over what exactly we want to do in the field of education. I think Obama's plan needs to be more clear in its expectations for schools. Right now there isn't any strong leadership at the national level, and I don't see anything in this plan that makes me think it will change. Starting more grant programs is exactly what "throwing money at the problem" means. It's basically divesting the federal government of any responsibility for coming up with a nationally coordinated plan for improving schools.
The rest of the plan is more platitudes. More parental involvement, more math and science improvement, more help for struggling students. And again, when a solution is proposed it involves competitive grants. Otherwise it's all goals with no way to get there.
I don't think this plan goes far enough to fix what's wrong with education in America. If anything, we're going to get more of the same. Unless there's a concerted effort to provide guidance for every school we're going to have the same old situation with a bunch of different organizations, think tanks, and speakers saying a bunch of different things that a bunch of different schools use in different ways.
By the way, I'm not seeing anything about higher education. Something needs to be done, and done yesterday, about the prohibitive costs of higher education. Failures at the national level to properly fund student loans have left many with private loans, which are probably the biggest racket around. It's criminal that I have private loan debt at 10% interest and credit cards at 5% when private loan debt is impossible to discharge through bankruptcy. Things need to change, and I'm planning on writing a diary on several BIG changes I would make on this front.
Once again, we need STRONG NATIONAL LEADERSHIP. Anything less is not going to accomplish anything.